Acquiring Critical Thinking and Decision-Making Skills: An Evaluation of a Serious Game Used by Undergraduate Dental Students in Dental Public Health

Abstract

Serious gaming claims to provide an interactive and motivational approach to learning; hence, it is being increasingly used in various disciplines, including dentistry. GRAPHIC (Games Research Applied to Public Health with Innovative Collaboration)-II, a serious game for dental public health, was used by dental undergraduates at King's College London, in the 2013-2014 academic year. The aim was to explore the use of GRAPHIC and student perspectives on the game. Students were divided into two groups with 79 students in each group, based on timetabling schedules to use the game as part of their learning. The average number of submission attempts by students in group 1 and group 2 used to complete the game was 18.3 (SD = 14.45) and 8.9 (SD = 16.80), respectively (p \ 0.001). Logged data also showed that more students in group 2 completed the game with only one attempt (n = 23), compared with group 1 (n = 4). Amongst these students there were four different patterns of satisfactory answers which constituted their chance to 'win' and a range of times. Across the two groups, a number of students completed the game with a high number ([30) of attempts (n = 18). These findings suggest that whilst some students may have completed the game using a collaborative approach, others may have used a random approach to complete the game. These two strategies are considered to hinder students from achieving learning outcomes within the game, and may be related to the limitations of the game in managing the role of failure. Feedback from students towards the game was positive overall with further development suggested. In summary, GRA-PHIC contributed to dental public health education, and the logging system of gaming 123Tech Know Learn (2017) 22:209-218 DOI 10.1007 activities can be considered as a helpful feature of serious games, to permit academic staff to identify and assist students in achieving learning outcomes, and inform future game refinement.

Current State of Serious Games in Dentistry: A Scoping Review

“…Of the full-text articles reviewed, 11 were excluded because they were not SGs, 6 were not SGs in dentistry, 3 were secondary studies, and 1 paper was in French language. 3,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] In addition, six studies were identified by 6,12,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] corresponding to 19 studies, were included, because six studies were reported more than once. [54][55][56][57][58][59] Figure 1 shows the flow diagram of the selection process of our review.…”

“…About half of the SGs (n = 9) were developed in Brazil, 12,38,39,41,44,[47][48][49][50] three in the United Kingdom, 43,51,52 two in Taiwan, 37,45 and two in the United States. 6,53 A smaller number (n = 1) were developed in Germany, 46 Spain, 42 and South Africa.…”

“…Two SGs were developed to teach about biosafety in dentistry 38,44 ; another one was developed as an e-learning Dental Public Health resource for dental undergraduates. 43 Ten SGs were developed for oral health promotion; of these, five were designed for school children, 46,48,50,52,53 three for preschool children, 12,45,49 and two for both preschool children and parents. 47,51 The topics included dental caries prevention, 11,47,48 diet, 11,38,47,49,50 oral hygiene, 12,[45][46][47]50,51,53 other oral health habits, 12,48 dental eruption, and dentition.…”

Two Years After: A Scoping Review of GDPR Effects on Serious Games Research Ethics Reporting

“…In the period before GDPR introduction, eight studies or roughly 27% and in the period after nine studies or about 19% are concerned with Exergames when reporting on data protection. Examining the context of data protection phrases revealed that authors emphasised most the anonymisation of study artefacts such as transcripts [30], spreadsheets [38], blog-posts [35] or usage/interaction and activity profiles [24]. In both sub-collections, studies only sporadically reported on anonymisation of participants while also sometimes referring to "anonymising" when actually "pseudonymising" was performed [39].…”

Understanding graduates' experiences with a simulator-based ship handling course series

“…students perceive themselves "in action" in a "reality of operation", even though the situation is simulated (Pastre, 2005, p. 3). Studies have demonstrated the advantage of implementing simulation and gaming into curriculum for student learning achievement, motivation, critical thinking, and problem solving (Gerber & Scott, 2011;Hwang & Chen, 2017;Sipiyaruk, Gallagher, Hatzipanagos, & Reynolds, 2017).…”